The FDA recently approved two new endoscopic bariatric therapies (EBT) for the treatment of obesity. According to the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE), this development provides important new, minimally invasive tools for combatting the obesity epidemic and offers many patients an alternative to surgery.

Many new and emerging treatments can be performed endoscopically, providing an effective and minimally invasive approach that fills a gap in the management of obesity and related conditions.
Despite the positive impact of bariatric surgery on individual patients, only about 1 percent of qualified candidates undergo these surgical procedures.

Patients with cancers of the mid- and lower throat may have higher survival rates if their initial treatment includes surgery, according to new research presented to the 2015 European Cancer Congress.

Researchers told the Congress that a nationwide study in Taiwan found that, five years after diagnosis, radical surgery was associated with significant overall survival benefits among patients whose cancers of the throat had started to spread. However, fewer than half of the patients in the study received surgery.

Dr Chih-Tao Cheng, MD, a medical researcher at the Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center in Taipei City, Taiwan, said:

Caesarean delivery was not associated with decrease in the at-birth fracture rates in infants with osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare bone disorder, said a consortium of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine.

The new research is the first study to come from the Brittle Bone Disorders Consortium, a new National Institutes of Health collaborative clinical research network focused on brittle bone disorders such as osteogenesis imperfecta.

Osteogenesis imperfecta is a connective tissue disorder that affects approximately 1 in 15,000 people. The major clinical feature of the disorder is increased fragility of bone, which leads to recurrent fractures and bone deformities. In the severe forms of the disorder, fractures occur in utero. With increased availability of prenatal ultrasound examination and genetic testing, many are diagnosed before birth.

 

Five billion people worldwide do not have access to safe and affordable surgery and anesthesia when they need it. As a consequence, millions of people are dying from common, easily treatable conditions like appendicitis, fractures, or obstructed labour. This is according to a major new Commission co-led by experts at King